Understandings
by PoeticLife
Summary: Arthur was sleeping, mouth open and chainmail on. Mordred was sleeping a little ways away, looking innocent just to spite him. Gwaine was keeping watch with a borrowed shirt and an untroubled face as he drew in the dirt. Merlin considered, just for a moment, what it would be like to leave now. / Merlin is angry about being abandoned in 5x02 and ends up discussing magic and Morgana.


**I worked on this whenever I was mad instead of actually getting mad myself. It works wonderfully. I would recommend writing while angry.**

It was dark, and his head hurt, and he was lying on the ground with his head against rough stone. It wasn't a comfortable angle. He thought he might have scraped the back of his shoulders against something, and bruised them badly as well.

Merlin remembered, slowly, that Morgana had thrown him into a the cavern wall so that she could kill Arthur. He had watched helplessly as Mordred had stabbed her - _why would he stab her?_ \- and helped Arthur out of the cavern.

Mordred hadn't spared him another glance, instead helping Arthur to stand and stagger away. Merlin remembered hearing Gwaine and Percival just outside the entrance to the cavern, and they hadn't been asking about him.

Merlin knew he should be glad that Arthur was safe, and he was, but he wanted to hold onto this quiet sort of rage for a while. He almost always had to hide his thoughts out of necessity and put on a smile to hide it, but he found it hard to think positively and didn't particularly want to.

They had left him. Or, to be more accurate, Mordred had left him, and the rest hadn't bothered to find out if he was safe. The Diamair had mostly healed him, and he could probably walk out of the cave without staggering like Arthur had in Mordred's arms. He decided to put his ability to walk to the test.

Sitting up made him a little dizzy and pulled at the scabs on his back, so he stayed in that position for a minute or so, trying not to think. _They had left him here._ Unpleasant thoughts didn't swirl so much as they clumped together in a sludgy mess.

Merlin stood up slowly, leaning against the cave's wall for support. Blood pounded through his head and made him stop until he could hear past the quick beat of his heart in the back of his skull. He tried to remember how long it would take to get back to Camelot and couldn't.

He took a few deep breaths and decided that he was well enough to start walking with a bit of support from the wall. Merlin lifted his foot and put it in front of him, scraping the dirt floor with the bottom of his shoes in a way that was incredibly loud without any other sound than his breathing. He looked around the cave, but though the blood on the ground was now drying brown, Morgana was gone.

He didn't know how to feel about the lack of a body. In a way, he was selfishly grateful that he didn't have to see the body of a woman who, however corrupt she might now be, was once a good friend to him. In another, darker part of him, he knew that she wasn't dead and that he would have to be the one to finish her. He tried to imagine killing Morgana with no remorse and gave up when his mind kept coming back to the image of Mordred stabbing her with his sword.

Merlin closed his eyes in an attempt to forget his previous train of thought, concentrating instead on the roughness of the rock beneath his hand and the solid earth beneath his feet. He took another step, dragging his feet along the floor. Slowly, in this way, he made it out of the cave.

He briefly speculated on how much time had passed and whether he would be able to catch up with them, or if he was better off staying where he was and then riding Kilgharrah back to Camelot. There was barely any light to see by, but the glimmer of wetness told him that the blood on the ground seemed to be drying but not dry, giving some indication of how long ago they must have left but none as to where he could follow them to.

Merlin had been born with an excellent sense of direction, and inwardly thanked whatever god existed for it. He had a vague sense of which direction Camelot was, and he was starting to think more clearly. He thought he could probably point himself in the direction of the city, use a spell to see the way ahead, and catch up with the rest of them. If they had horses, it might make that task trickier, but he was reasonably confident that he could make it seem natural that he had found them. He hoped that no one was hurt, but knowing Arthur's luck, it was unlikely.

 _Arthur._ He remembered with a jolt of panic that he had left with Mordred, who at any time could kill him - in his sleep, awake when no one was looking and everyone blindly trusted strangers with magic, as a well-faked accident - and took another few determined steps out of the cave. He would keep Arthur alive if it was the last thing he did, and he thought sometimes that it would be.

Mordred may have seemed to have good intentions, but he had also left Merlin for dead in the cave without checking. He supposed that it was repayment for not saving him years ago, but it didn't bode well that Mordred clearly held grudges a long time and didn't appear to feel any guilt in taking revenge. The image of Arthur dropping to his knees, weighed down by armour and a stab wound, flashed through his mind and he shuddered.

Merlin had to keep walking, abandoning his attempts to push the subject out of his mind. It looked like evening in the vision, and though he didn't really believe that it would be very soon, prophecies had surprised him before. The battle behind him had looked bloody, and though it was not tonight, that didn't mean it wasn't coming.

Arthur would die, and he wouldn't be there to save him. Once he had seen it, he resolved to do all he could to change it, but trying to change it always made it happen with worse consequences - _what could be worse?_ a voice inside him cried - and he didn't want to cause anything that would make others die.

He tried to remember a time when he didn't have to take casualties and prophecies into account in his plans to save Arthur. He wished for his first few years in Camelot, when all it took was a hug from Gaius and a smart remark from Arthur to make nearly anything better and the deaths were few and of strangers.

There was no point, Merlin told himself, starting to walk faster than was probably wise, in reminiscing about things he couldn't have anymore. This was simply the way things were, and there wasn't much he could do about it. He had been so stupid, in his first few years here, thinking he could do everything and fail no one, letting his actions be ruled by his destiny and then contradicting that by doing what he truly wanted to do. He had learned, while he lived in the city, that to make anything work, he had to commit to one action and keep his other actions consistent.

Mordred was a threat, and while he couldn't do anything about it yet, he would watch and wait for his next move. He was tired of always being on the defensive and reacting to the actions of everyone around him, but there was no other way that he could act on the matter of Mordred. He hated that no one trusted him enough to take his word for it, but reminded himself that there was no reason why anyone should trust a servant over a lady or an advisor or a deceptively helpful druid boy.

Merlin stopped walking abruptly, and a wave of dizziness came over him along with a cool breeze. He had reached the edge of the torch-lit cavern to the forest outside it, where there was no light to show him which way he was supposed to go to get back to Camelot. The fortress Morgana had apparently seized control over, however briefly, was behind him, so he guessed that into the fortress was the wrong way. Morgana may have been in the fortress, but there was a good chance that she wasn't, and he didn't know what he would do if he saw her.

He murmured a spell under his breath and saw with perfect clarity that the knights had set up camp much closer to the fortress than he had originally thought. Merlin took a few deep breaths, nearly managed to convince himself that he did want to see the knights and Mordred, and started walking.

The bitter anger inside him refused to be quelled, and he found that it didn't surprise him. He hadn't had the time or the right to be truly angry about anything in ten years. Old wounds that hadn't healed were opening and making themselves known, and as he thought this, the scabs across his shoulder blades broke open.

The blood running from them was uncomfortable and hot and made his shirt stick to him. Merlin cursed himself for wearing the blue shirt and resented the laundry he would have to do. Thick liquid ran in rivulets down his back as he quietly walked through the forest, a fury building in him that would have scared him if he had any mind to be anything but angry.

Merlin could smell the faint scent of smoke and knew that it was from a fire recently put out. He wondered who lit it, then decided he didn't care and that it was for the best that the knights could fend for themselves. He remembered how abysmal Percival was at lighting fires and realised that it was probably Mordred trying to endear himself to them by making himself out to be helpful so that they'd underestimate him.

He gazed past a few thick trees to where they had set up camp. Arthur was sleeping, mouth open and chainmail on. Mordred was sleeping a little ways away, looking innocent just to spite him. Percival, Elyan and Leon were asleep as well, and Gwaine was keeping watch with a borrowed shirt and an untroubled face as he drew in the dirt with a stick.

Merlin considered, just for a moment, what it would be like to leave now. They must have thought him dead or missing, and didn't seem worried at all about where he was. He could pretend that he had been killed by Morgana or some Saxon and flee to practice magic freely in another kingdom or with Kilgharrah. He could go and never return.

His eyes fell on Arthur's face, and he knew that he would never leave.

Merlin walked out of the trees, saw that Gwaine hadn't so much as glanced up, and snapped. It was this refusal to address him or even look his way that made that bitter anger grow. He might have forgiven them if he had looked worried or had been peering into the bushes to wait for him, but this was not a worried or waiting man.

"You left me," he spat. Gwaine jumped, looked up, and smiled confusedly, and in that moment he knew that he hadn't been missed by any of the men he called friends. "You left me in there for dead."

There was a moment of wide eyes and comprehension, and then horror spread across his face. "You were still in there?"

 _"Where else would I be?"_ He demanded in a loud, indignant whisper, unwilling to wake Mordred. "I was unconscious and Arthur was gone and none of you were there and you didn't know? _You didn't even know I was gone?"_

Gwaine looked genuinely regretful, which was something but not much. He stared at him, at a loss for words. "I'm sorry. We'd just escaped and Arthur was injured, and Leon asked about you but that Mordred kid told him not to worry and that you were doing something else."

Merlin remembered Mordred's face in the cavern as he had glanced back at him, and began seriously to fear for the future of Camelot and her king. He realised for the first time, ignoring the sick shock in his stomach, that Arthur may truly be killed by the druid boy he already trusted enough to let sleep beside him.

"Right," he muttered bitterly, and glanced around the camp. "Do you have my healing supplies?"

Gwaine reached over and handed him a bag that he recognised as the one Gaius had given him before they left, looking aghast. "Are you injured? Merlin -"

"She threw me into a wall," he said shortly, and turned away from him to avoid saying anything rude he might regret. Merlin took off his jacket, folding it carefully before pulling off his ruined shirt. There was a sharp intake of breath behind him that he deliberately ignored.

"Morgana?"

"Who else?" he muttered, and realised that he was shaking with anger and coldness he couldn't feel on his skin. He wondered if this was the same rage that Morgana had felt when she was bound in chains in her father's dungeons years ago and the same rage that now controlled her, and the thought repulsed him enough to make him pity her and to realise that he had to calm down _now_. "Who else but her? She's always hated me, ever since - I did something, and she's never forgiven me, not that I've given her any reason to. She would happily see me dead."

"But you wouldn't be happy to see her dead," Gwaine inferred, walking over to sit beside him. He wondered why until he took another cloth and started cleaning him off as well. "You were friends once, were you not?"

Merlin jumped at his touch and drew away. "Stop it, Gwaine. I can do it on my own. Yes, we were friends, or something like it."

"I know you can do it on your own," he replied calmly, not taking any offense and not backing down. "That doesn't mean you should. Let me help."

The words made tears sting at the back of his eyes, unexpected and unwanted. He half-wished Gaius was here, so that he could talk freely and not worry about what he might let slip. He bit his lip in an effort not to start truly crying, then turned around wordlessly to let him clean the blood away from his shoulders.

"So," Gwaine murmured a few seconds later, "what exactly happened with Morgana? I understand it's a sore spot around here, especially with Arthur, and no one seems to know exactly what happened. One minute she's a lady of the court, the next a traitorous sorceress and Uther's illegitamate daughter. If you were there -"

"I was there." Merlin hated himself more than anything else in the world at that moment, shivering and lonely and talking in a quiet voice about something he would never forgive himself for doing. The image of Morgana, choking to death and determined not to be held or comforted by her murderer, flashed through his mind.

"I saw it happen. I think I helped it happen. She had magic years before anyone knew about it, and I know it wasn't magic that corrupted her, whatever people are saying. Morgana used to have dreams - still does, probably - about things that were going to happen. Things like Arthur drowning in a lake, which made no sense at the time, but then things happened and I ended up having to get him out of the water when he was half-drowned. I don't think he remembers much of that, so asking him wouldn't be much use."

They both glanced over at Arthur, sleeping in his full battle armour. Merlin thought, with a petty sense of superiority over Mordred, that he would never have let Arthur sleep in his chainmail, let alone that much armour. Gwaine finished cleaning his shoulders and started to bandage them.

"Gaius and I were the only ones who knew about it - and Gwen, later on, when she was already too far gone to be talked out of her plots - so it came as a complete shock to him. Of course, she'd been betraying them for about a year or two beforehand, passing secrets and plotting assassinations with her half-sister on her mother's side, Morgause."

"I've heard tales about how sweet and lovely and good she was," Gwaine said abesntly. "I have to wonder how she turned that bitter."

Merlin swallowed and tried to speak without telling the entire horrible story. "She was sweet and all that, and her sense of justice is what did it, I think. She hated Uther's execution of magic-users. It was blind and senseless, and she couldn't stand for it. You remember how Uther was. Then she realised that her dreams were a sign of magic, and when I could have and should have helped, I didn't. She had no one to turn to except her sister, and with all of her hatred of Uther and fear of death, I don't think she ever stopped to think about any consequences after that. I think she thinks that killing Arthur and ruling Camelot would be justice for magic-users like herself. It isn't, though," he added fiercely, turning around and looking Gwaine straight in the face, "it's exactly the opposite and it's likely to cause more fear of magic."

Gwaine gazed at him with surprise and something that could have been suspicion, but he was past the point of caring anymore. "What do you mean, you could have helped?"

"I know more about magic than Arthur would like me to," Merlin replied, not bothering to fake a smile. "He doesn't know, and I'd hate to think what he'd say if he did. I would see magic returned to Camelot, given the chance. Would you?"

There was a long pause in which Merlin's hands shook badly and his heart sped up, until he said, "I've been in kingdoms where magic is legal and talked with sorcerers and druids, and I don't think there's anything to fear that isn't of our own making."

Merlin held his gaze for a moment, trying to see some hint that he didn't fully believe what he was saying. There was none. He had nothing to fear from Gwaine, if he told him, and he knew without question that he would defend him against Arthur, if he ever found out and if it came to that. His heart beat wildly.

"I - Gwaine, I -"

A twig cracked from somewhere in the forest, and they snapped their heads towards the sound as one. Gwaine held up one finger, whispered, "Hold that thought," and crept silently out of the clearing into the dark woods.

Merlin's pulse pounded through his body, and the stupidity of what he had been about to say hit him with nearly equal force to the headache that was beginning to come back. He was an idiot who needed to learn to shut his mouth and do his duty in silence. He hadn't meant to end his sentence there, but it had happened, and he had confessed part of his view on magic to a knight of Camelot. A terror instilled by a childhood of believing himself a monster was trying to make him sob hysterically or run, but he refused and sat still with a blank expression.

Gwaine came back a few moments later, shaking his head. "Pheasant, nothing else."

He smiled a bit at the memory. "Big one?"

"Small," he replied, and held his hand about a foot off the ground. Gwaine gave him a wide grin that was returned, though Merlin still shook from the adrenaline of nearly saying something he shouldn't have. Gwaine sat down.

"So, what were you going to tell me?"

Merlin weighed his options, realised that telling Gwaine now meant that there was an unfortunately large chance of being overheard and that all he needed to know tonight was if Gwaine would be on his side if it came to it, and he sighed. "Nothing," he replied, shaking his head. "I just want to go to bed. And don't leave me behind in the morning."

"I'm sorry about that," Gwaine said seriously, humour leaving his face. "I really am, Merlin. I'm used to not knowing where you are one moment and you popping up and being perfectly fine the next. You're always fine, and we take that for granted when we shouldn't. It's not as though none of us care about you."

"I know that," Merlin replied, nodding. "I do. Thank you."

Gwaine gave him a long look, as though he knew what Merlin had wanted to tell him and understood, and turned back to his drawings in the dirt.


End file.
